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shore to the Oswego, then passed up that river, through Oneida 1906 

 Lake and down the Mohawk until they could lay their bundles evcrance 

 of beaver skins before the English, on the strand at Albany. 



This was, indeed, a triumph of trade. They spoke a language 

 which the traders there had never heard, but they brought many 

 packs of furs; and, with perhaps, a double interpretation, the 

 business sped to the entire satisfaction of the English. These 

 people came in various bands ; about twenty hunters, in the spring 

 of 1722; and in the spring of 1723, over eighty, besides their 

 numerous train of women and children; with sundry other parties 

 following. They traveled over 1 ,200 miles to get to Albany. 



There developed in England at this time a considerable outcry 

 against the monopoly enjoyed by the Hudson's Bay Company; 

 and an ingenious advocacy of free trade in North American fur- 

 gathering. . . . Arthur Dobbs, who combined with the 

 natural British hostility to the French a bitterly critical attitude 

 towards the Hudson's Bay Company, set forth at length in his 

 book views which no doubt met the approval of many of the 

 British public of his day. Curiously enough, one of his strongest 

 arguments was based on a map-maker's blunder. On the large 

 map which accompanies his work, the Great Lakes are shown, 

 with " the great fall of Niagara " properly indicated at the outlet 

 of "Conti or Errie Lake." The whole region of the Lakes is 

 shown, as accurately on the whole as on many another map, up 

 to that time ; but running into Lake Erie, a few miles south of the 

 present site of Buffalo, the unknown geographer had added a 

 stream of considerable size, and named it " Conde River." Its 

 real prototype, in the annals of earlier explorers, may have been 

 the Cattaraugus or Eighteen-Mile Creek; but here we have it, 

 shown unduly large, as the only stream entering Lake Erie, its 

 head-waters coming from vague mountains to the southeast. 



Contemplating this stream, and the exigencies of the fur trade 

 in the region, Mr. Dobbs saw a great opportunity for the British, 

 " by forming a Settlement on the River Conde, which is navigable 



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